But individuals are much softer targets than
governments or major corporations. And every individual has
access to information — ranging from medical data to bank-account
numbers to online passwords to basic biographical information —
off which enterprising hackers can profit.

Flashpoint, a private intelligence firm that researches
online criminal networks, released Thursday its annual
report on "highlights and trends in the deep and dark
web." The report, which was provided
to Business Insider, gives a sense of how online criminality
evolved in 2015.

The firm, which provides proprietary intelligence on
dark-web activity, gathered some jarring data about the
ease and apparent banality of contemporary online criminal
enterprises. For example, Flashpoint found one online marketplace
on which cybercriminals were selling
hacking victims' birth dates for as little as $3, for use in
verifying fraudulent Google Wallet accounts.

The Flashpoint report portrays an online criminal
community that's becoming increasingly transnational. And
with the help of growing foreign connections, dark web
users in a country that's been at the forefront of
politically motivated hacking are starting to make a splash on
the criminal scene as well.

Flashpoint's experts have "observed increasing signs indicating
the maturing and internationalization of the Chinese
cybercrime underground," the report said.

Graphic from a Bank of America report depicting cyber
attacks during a single 11-hour period in August of
2015.Bank of
America

But over the past year, they've shown signs of moving on to
web forums and established networks that don't depend on
this degree of personal contact. And, according to Flashpoint,
these forums are usually "within the Russian underground."

Xi also made a point of
meeting with Silicon Valley
tech-industry leaders during a September
2015 trip to the US, a sign of how highly Beijing values
some of its business relationships in the US. Giving a free
reign to cybercriminals — as Russia arguably has — would go
against a number of Xi's apparent priorities.